Gender trouble: Ontario’s Sunshine list reveals men come out on top, even in the public service

Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne may have made closing the gender wage gap a government priority, but she has a lot of work to do in her own backyard.

Of the top 100 best-paid employees in the province, only 24 are women, according to an analysis of the 2015 Sunshine List released Thursday. The annual report lists all public sector employees who make over $100,000: at the very top there are few women. This, despite the fact women are over-represented in the public service and make up more than 60 per cent of the public payroll.

It’s a slight improvement over 2014, when 21 women made it into the top 100. The shift seems to be a result of two factors: Pan Am Games executives getting big performance bonuses for completing the games on time and under budget, and the removal of Hydro One from the list, since many of its employees were men.

Of the top 100 best paid direct Ontario Public Service employees — the deputy ministers and others who work directly for the government and are usually chosen for promotion by Cabinet or the premier — only 20 are women. The exact same number as in 2014. Again, it raises the question of whether the government, which has launched province-wide consultations on how to close the gender wage gap, is doing enough in its own hiring processes. The Ontario Public Service Employees Union (OPSEU) launched a radio campaign earlier this month saying recent cuts to public sector salaries further increase the gender wage gap — the fact women in Ontario make 73 cents for every dollar a man does on average and 82 cents on the dollar in the public sector.

“If government isn’t assuring women are promoted into senior positions in the public service, there is a lack of credibility when they’re asking workplaces to do the same,” said New Democrat Peggy Sattler, the party’s critic for women’s issues. She said Wynne included implementing a “gender lens” in public policy in some of her mandate letters to her Cabinet, but “it would be interesting to find out what if any structural processes have been put in place to ensure (that) gender lens.”

“Government has an obligation to model the kind of structures we want to see in the private sector and in workplaces across this province.”

Over time the picture has gotten only slightly better and not noticeably under Wynne, the province’s first female premier: In 1996, just ten women broke the list of top 100 earners. By 2010, there were 20 of them, 17 in 2011, 22 in 2012 and 21 in both 2013 and 2014. Of the province’s 28 deputy ministers — the head of the ministry on the public service side, essentially each minister’s right hand — nine are women; six were last year.

Treasury Board President Deb Matthews said the province can do more to address all forms of equity — whether it’s gender, race, sexuality or disability — but it has also made big strides. She said it’s something they are “actively engaged in” and part of the reason these numbers are released are so these sorts of analyses can happen.

In fact, women who work directly for the province in the Ontario Public Service — as opposed to broader public service employees like professors or nurses — enjoy one of the smallest wage gaps in the country: they earn just 12 cents less on average than their male counterparts, and improvement from the 16.5 per cent shortfall in 2008.

But Matthews noted there’s always more to do: “We haven’t finished the job by any means.”

A note on the analysis: The National Post analyzed the top 100 highest-paid members of the 2015 sunshine list. Seconded references were removed and genders were verified against online profiles. For the top 100 best paid direct Ontario Public Service employees, the National Post analyzed the legislative assembly and offices as well as the ministries.

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